Independent Test Verification: Consolidated Experience Report

• Nuno Silva Critical Software
• Rui Lopes Critical Software

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbqs.2012.15326

Resumo

Independent verification and validation (IV&V) has been a key process for decades, and is highlighted in several international certification standards. One of the activities described in the “ESA ISVV Guide” is independent test verification (stated as Integration/Unit Test Procedures and Test Data Verification). This activity is commonly overlooked since customers do not really see the added value of checking thoroughly the validation team work. This article presents the consolidated results of a large set of independent test verifications, including the main difficulties, results obtained and advantages/disadvantages for the industry of these activities. This study will support customers in opting-in or opting-out for this task in future IVV contracts since we provide factual results from some real case studies.

Palavras-chave: Independent, Test Verification, Experience Report

Referências

CENELEC EN 50128: Railway applications - Communication, signalling and processing systems - Software for railway control and protection systems.

ESA ISVV Guide, issue 2.0, 29/12/2008, European Space Agency.

GSWS: Galileo Software Standard, GAL-SPE-GLI-SYST-A/0092, 2004.

IEEE 1012-2004 - IEEE Standard for Software Verification and Validation. IEEE Computer Society.

ISO/IEC 12207:2008 Systems and software engineering – Software life cycle processes.

ISVV Web site, www.isvv.com, visited on 13/03/2012.

Software Engineering: Are we getting better at it?, Michael Jones, ESA Bulletin 121, February 2005, pp. 52-57.

Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach., Pressman, R., McGraw-Hill, 5th Edition, November 2001.

DO-178B/ED-12B, Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification, 01/12/1992, RTCA.